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Hope Lies on Television

In addition to the writing I do here, I'm the television editor for Hope Lies at 24 Frames per Second. A major part of my contribution to that site comes in the form of my Hope Lies on Television column, in which I discuss the areas where the mediums of television and film meet, and the similarities and differences that arise when they do. Over the course of the series, I have examined the role the director plays in television versus their role on films, the benefits of the episodic form when it comes to formalist experiments, and I have applied the auteur theory, so often considered a cinematic idea, to the works of writers who work on television. It's a fun column that I find really exciting to write, and all the entries are archived here.

#1 Boardwalk Bad - The role of the director on television shows, and how Martin Scorsese's work on Boardwalk Empire goes against the grain.

#2 Teleconventional Breakdown - Why the structure of television allows for shows to go crazy once in a while and try something bold, daring and experimental without harming the basic integrity of the show.

#3 Behind the Mask - It seems like superhero movies are everywhere, but why do television networks struggle to make a successful superhero series?

#10 Movin' On Up - In which I use The Inbetweeners Movie as a case study of how and why a television series might want to make the leap from small to big screen.

#11 To End, or to Finish - After a brief-ish hiatus, I return to Hope Lies on Television to write about the fear surrounding the possible cancellation of Community, and how the idea that a show being cancelled before it finishes its story, even if it doesn't really have a story to finish, suggests a great change in how people perceive television now.

#13 Two Detectives, One Name - Shrewdly timed to coincide with the end of Sherlock series 2, I use this article to examine the ways in which the BBC series and Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes films take elements of the Holmes character that suit their stories and medium to create works that are surprisingly complementary.

#14 Chasing The Moment - In what may prove to be one of my more ill-timed columns, I wrote about how brilliant, and possibly revolutionary, HBO's Luck was and it went live on the very day that the show's cancellation - for tragic, understandable reasons - was announced. The column examines the idea that the combination of small, intimate moments within a broader narrative may be a way for serialised dramas to avoid becoming too concerned with a master plot at the expense of the pleasures of episodic television.

#15 Only Forward - After a lengthy break, the column returns with a look at remakes, and the reason why cinematic remakes are so numerous and often successful yet television remakes tend to be rare, and successful ones rarer still.

#16 The End of 30 Rock and More Besides - After seven seasons of gleeful absurdity, 30 Rock finally closed up shop and sent its wayward cast of screwballs out into the big wide world. To mark the occasion, I wrote about the how and why of how the show managed to last so long, as well as the question of whether or not it represents a new measure for judging a series to be a success in an age where few shows are watched live and en masse anymore.